SOE Unit Plan Rubric 2008

Student Name: Ryan Feeney
Assessor: Jay Fogleman
Score: 31/45

Comments/Notes

• Your unit test is problematic. Before trying to use this test, you should:
  • Test should have a title and instructions
  • Format your matching so that items are arranged in columns on one page.
  • Each section of the test should have instructions.
  • MC items should be grammatically correct, e.g. the Stem + correct answer should form a complete sentence. These sentences should start with a capital letter and end with a period. Hasn't someone told you this already???
  • Be sure all test items are clear. For example, you ask "which of the following match.." and your choices have " WordA...WordB." Will every student know what the "..." represents in your mind?
• Feedback for lesson 1:
  • You expect students to come in and sit at a desk with a microscope & premounted slide. You recognized the danger of the equipment being mishandled because you said you would provide a quick tutorial on microscope use.
    • When exactly are you taking attendance? Is it wise have students sit in front of the 'scopes w/o guidance?
    • Are you sure your pretest is telling you something useful? What do you really want to know?
  • Your pretest is really an activity, not an opening. Why not move it down as the first activity in your lesson and spend some time at the beginning introducing the unit with some through provoking informal questions? - fogleman Jan 6, 2009
  • How will you transition to the main part of the lesson? What will you say to give the students an idea of what their goal is? Did you change this? I still get a sense that you expect students to "comply" to your teaching without an explanation from you as to what they are going to do during the lesson and what they will be able to do at the end of the day that though couldn't before. - fogleman Jan 6, 2009
  • In the engagement, you mention students using computers and textbooks to complete a worksheet.
    • What computers? They are not on your materials list? Is this a laptop cart? If so, what computer-based resources are students supposed to access/use? How will students be grouped? What will students who aren't typing be doing?
    • Do you really envision having students set aside a slide of cells to look up the parts of a cell in a textbook?
  • When you close the lesson, how will you assess students' understandings of organelles?
    • Will you connect their activities to their early observations of cells using the microscope?
• Feedback for lesson 2:
  • What misconceptions are you expecting to address? How will you address these? It is a mistake to expect to do this extemporaneously.
  • Your opening seems to be long (30 min) and involve you teaching. You should consider moving this into your engagement section and thinking about how your opening sets up the overall lesson.
  • You should write your objectives concisely: - fogleman Jan 6, 2009
    • Students will be able to
      • explain the function of a cell's organelles and relate these functions to commonly used analogies.
      • locate organelles in cells using a microscope.
  • Check your spellings. In lesson 1, you spelled "board" as bored. In lesson 2, you mispelled Wiikpedia. IF YOU MISSPELL TWO OR THREE WORDS on the board, IT WILL BE ALL OVER. (You will have to regain the respect the kids who notice.) - fogleman Jan 6, 2009
  • I still don't think you're giving students enough a justification for doing your activity. Why should they care? One idea would be to have them look at the cells in the microscope first and them guess at what they are seeing. Then ask them to brainstorm what types of machines a celll would need in order to operate. THEN have them do their oganelle research. - fogleman Jan 6, 2009
  • Your "1/2 Jigsaw" activity needs additional planning to work:
    • How much time each task (choosing organnelle/form groups, research, synthesis, presentation) take?
    • For each organelle, where should students look for information? If left to their own devices, they will go (1) google, and (2) wikipedia. Is this your intention? Will information from these sources be better than what is in text?
    • Is there a reason students are being asked to assemble this information this way?
    • What will students be doing during the presentations? Should you have some sort of scaffold to help students present/orgnanize this information?
    • Why do the 1/2 jigsaw? Why not do a jigsaw instead. Students' whole-presentations are generally useless for everyone except the presenters, and you're depending on these presentations as a source of information about all the organelles.
  • How will you tie this research activity to their initial observations of cells in your closure?
  • No homework? Are you going to revisit organelles in another lesson?

Revisions suggested:

• The formatting of your lesson plans is totally botched because you pasted in text from Word. For these plans to be usable, you need to fix their formatting so that you can bullet and subbullet portions. I would advise just printing out this lessons and retyping them in from scratch. Remember that once you delete the text from a page, it will let you start the new page with a template, and you can choose the RI Lesson Template which will give you all your headings.
  • You lesson plans are still not very usable. You should single space each lesson, break up paragraphs into bulleted sentences, and clearly delineate engagement section into activities with times assigned.
• You need to look at my comments on your first three and enhance/extend them. In the block schedule, students need to do something student-centered (lab, skit, presentation, groupwork) every lesson or they get sluggish.
  • In the first two lessons, you have students assembling information from online/textbook sources. You should be wary of repeating the same activity day after day.
• You should describe three activities per class or 2 activities and a lab.
• Describe some specific accommodations that you will expect to have to provide. DONE.
• Correct your typos. - BETTER
• If you don't have resources done, you should at least describe them in a paragraph.

*
Revisions Required:

• Delineate lessons 1 and 2 into timed opening, engagement, and closing sections. Use the following comments to format the three sections:
• Each opening should connect the day's topic with students' lives and explain why the topic and the day's activities are relevant and worth doing.
  • The opening is not really an activity. It is a chance to take roll and set up the day's activities. A question students can answer as they settle and you take roll, some listening to students' ideas, observations etc, and an overview of the day is all you need.
• Engagement should be split into activities. Each activity should include a projected time, instructions for students, and a description of what you will be doing during this time.
  • You need to make your expectations about students' internet use clear before anyone sits down in front of a computer.
  • You should make clear what they students will be creating/producing.
• Closure should remind students of day's objectives, and ask them questions that help them connect day's activities to these objectives.

---

Evidence/ Comments:

4

---

Evidence/ Comments:

3: Accommodations are not described.

---

Evidence/ Comments:

3. It is not clear that enough has been planned for each 90 minute block.

---

Evidence/ Comments:

3. Much of instruction is teacher-centered.

---

Evidence/Comments:

3: Little effort is made to explain the relevance of days' topics.

---

Evidence/Comments:

3

---

Evidence/Comments:

3: Technology is used, but instructions for their use are not made clear.

---

Evidence/Comments:

3. Key instructional materials such as worksheets and scaffold are not yet included.

---

Evidence/Comments

3: Students are not provided with daily opportunities to explore the topic via some sort of actions.

---

Evidence/Comments:

3

---

Evidence/Comments:

3 There are a few spelling errors. Format of lessons makes them unusable.

---

NSTA Content Evaluation

Number	NSTA Standard			Portion of Unit Plan	Score	Evidence / Comments
1a. Content:	Understand and can successfully convey to students the major concepts, principles, theories, laws, and interrelationships of their fields of licensure and supporting fields as recommended by the National Science Teachers Association;			•Unit •Overview •Rationale •Unpacking Learning Goals •Concept Map	3
1b.	Understand and can successfully convey to students the unifying concepts of science delineated by the National Science Education Standards;			•Two Benchmark* lessons. (* Lesson whose primary activity is conveying information)	3
1c.	Understand and can successfully convey to students important personal and technological applications of science in their fields of licensure			Lesson Plans	3
1d,	understand research and can successfully design, conduct, report evaluate investigations in science. and understand and can successfully use mathematics to process and report data, and solve problems, in their field(s) of licensure.			Inquiry Lesson Plan(s)	2
2. Nature of Science. Candidates:	understand the historical and cultural development of science and the evolution of knowledge in their discipline; understand the philosophical tenets, assumptions, goals, and values that distinguish science from technology and from other ways of knowing the world; engage students successfully in studies of the nature of science including, when possible, the critical analysis of false or doubtful assertions made in the name of science.			Lesson Plans	3
3. Inquiry Candidates	understand the processes, tenets, and assumptions of multiple methods of inquiry leading to scientific knowledge; engage students successfully in developmentally appropriate inquiries that require them to develop concepts and relationships from their observations, data, and inferences in a scientific manner.			Inquiry Lesson Plan(s)	2
4. Issues Candidates	understand socially important issues related to science and technology in their field of licensure, as well as processes used to analyze and make decisions on such issues; engage students successfully in the analysis of problems, including considerations of risks, costs, and benefits of alternative solutions; relating these to the knowledge, goals and values of the students.			Unit Rationale Lesson Plans	3
5.a General Teaching Skills Candidates	vary their teaching actions, strategies, and methods to promote the development of multiple student skills and levels of understanding; successfully promote the learning of science by students with different abilities, needs, interests, and backgrounds;			Lesson Plans	3
5. c-e Candidates	successfully organize and engage students in collaborative learning using different student group learning strategies; understand and build effectively upon the prior beliefs, knowledge, experiences, and interests of students; and create and maintain a psychologically and socially safe and supportive learning environment.			Lesson Plans	3
6. Curriculum Candidates	understand the curricular recommendations of the National Science Education Standards, and can identify, access, and/or create resources and activities for science education that are consistent with the standards; plan and implement internally consistent units of study that address the diverse goals of the National Science Education Standards and the needs and abilities of students.			Unit Rationale Learning Goals Concept Map	3
7 Community Candidates	identify ways to relate science to the community, involve stakeholders, and use community resources to promote the learning of science; involve students successfully in activities that relate science to resources and stakeholders in the community or to the resolution of issues important to the community.			Lesson Plans	3
8. Assessment Candidates	use multiple assessment tools and strategies to achieve important goals for instruction that are aligned with methods of instruction and the needs of students; use the results of multiple assessments to guide and modify instruction, the classroom environment, or the assessment process; use the results of assessments as vehicles for students to analyze their own learning, engaging students in reflective self-analysis of their own work.			Assessment Plans Lesson Plans Summative Assessment	3
9. Safety Candidates	understand the legal and ethical responsibilities of science teachers for the welfare of their students, the proper treatment of animals, and the maintenance and disposal of materials; know and practice safe and proper techniques for the preparation, storage, dispensing, supervision, and disposal of all materials used in science instruction; know and follow emergency procedures, maintain safety equipment, and ensure safety procedures appropriate for the activities and the abilities of students; treat all living organisms used in the classroom or found in the field in a safe, humane, and ethical manner and respect legal restrictions on their collection, keeping, and use.			Lesson Plans	3
					3